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UNREAL Candy. It’s candy, but probably not as you know it. When Michael got into an argument with his son about Halloween candy, neither of them knew it was going to be the start of a journey to unjunk candy. Using word of mouth and a smart social media presence, UNREAL Candy has grown at an explosive rate as word gets around that there is finally a candy that doesn’t contain corn syrup, GMOs, artificial flavors, and other gruesome ingredients. A quick look over UNREAL’s Facebook page shows that they have a very unique content strategy that doesn’t just talk about the brand, but celebrates all things Unreal and that really helps drive home their message.

Over the last two months, UNREAL Candy has seen a staggering growth rate on Facebook, more than doubling their fan numbers as people flock to find out more and request other candy to be “unjunked.” The chart below shows how much UNREAL has grown compared to other popular candy brands in the same period.

Those fans are extremely engaged too, they want to interact with UNREAL and have a two-way conversation about creating unjunked candy. This chart shows Facebook’s ‘People Talking About This’ metric as a percentage of total fans. Most brands average about 2% of fans talking about them, UNREAL is flying high with nearly 18% of fans engaged.

In terms of engagement, Unmetric looks at the number of Likes, Comments, Shares, and Estimated Impressions that each post gets to calculate an Engagement Score for each post. UNREAL is engaging its fans five times better than the average candy brand. Even M&Ms, with their popular mascots, weren’t as engaging.

UNREAL’s content strategy is to take a very visual approach to Facebook posts. There are hints of meme style elements in each of their graphics too. The post below was the most engaging post UNREAL did for the time period analyzed which scored 1,620, yet many of their posts often score higher than 500.

The best way to spread your message on Facebook is to get people to share your content, which is often a difficult thing to do as people don’t want to turn their own walls in to a bill board of brands. However, thanks to UNREAL’s marketing message, many people seem to feel good about sharing its brand message, like the post below which was the most shared post during the period analyzed.

Part of the reason UNREAL is getting a lot of attention from people is the fact that they appear to be really listening to what their customers and fans have to say. Plenty of people want to see unjunked versions of other popular candy and the UNREAL community managers are ensuring they reply to nearly 70% of fan posts.

Being part of an active community is one way smaller and independent brands can have an advantage over established brands. When the community feels like it is involved and talking to a brand that listens, the word of mouth is much more likely to spread.